The First Day of Gym

I had always grown at a rate quicker than my peers. I outgrew my own mother at the age of ten years, and when we moved to a new school again at the age of twelve going on thirteen I was already proportioned like a fully grown teenager.

Something I painstakingly tried to hide with oversized casual clothes. Big T-Shirts, boys’ gym shorts, relaxed jeans, oversized sweatshirts. Even my dress clothes were generally billowy on top, and long on the bottom. We went around the first day of school acquainting ourselves with the school and layout.

Some people were buying new gym clothes from the teacher, and some like me still had their clothes from last year. In fact, I still have and wear that same gym shirt even now, that is how oversized it was.

The next day, when we had to start dressing in our gym clothes and doing class activities, began just as uncomfortably as any other gym class. I ran into the shower area as soon as the girls started commenting on my body. It always made me very upset and uncomfortable. I quickly dressed and locked away my regular clothes.

I wandered out wearing the identical black shorts and grey shirt with our first and last names in black marker that everyone else was uniformed in. I was one of the first girls out of the locker room since I scrambled to cover myself. As I stood there clutching my sides cold and embarrassed in the huge terrazzo box I heard from the top of the bleachers, “Hey new girl!” A name I had become accustomed to reacting to.

When I turned to address the caller, who was perched atop the still-pushed-together bleachers like some kind of giant bird, the next words were, “You look like a slut!”

I was not only shocked by this accusation since I was wearing the same clothes he was, but also by his sudden arm movement. Like he was throwing something?

Then it hit me, the eraser he had thrown at me. Kt slipped right down my shirt. What are the odds, right? I was half the gym away, he couldn’t have been aiming to do that, could he? In any case, it sent me right back into the locker room. I can’t know for sure, but that event may be the one thing that endeared me to the majority of girls in my class.

They busted out of there like a tween girl sub-chapter of the Hell’s Angels. There was screaming, there was flailing, there was tripping and falling on my part. The teacher must have spent the whole first twenty minutes, in other words at least half of the class dealing with this circus. I may not cause a lot of trouble but by God does it seem to find me, and isn’t it spectacularly memorable when it does?

This particular event, the first time I was ever called a slut, the fact that I was wearing the same clothes as every other person in the room, has always really stuck with me. It exemplified the fact that slut shaming has nothing to do with the clothes you wear.

I realized that when people are made to feel a certain way, in this case maybe it was aroused. That boy was embarrassed, so he tried to make me embarrassed. It worked at that moment, but only for a moment. Everyone else who wasn’t being directly attacked could see what was happening. These girls had only just met me, and as far as I could tell were edging toward not liking me that much, but they supported me. We can always support people when the time comes whether we like them or not, right is right.

K.B. Silver